week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I attended the Midwest Regional this year and I can say that I was not surprised by the results. I am, however, surprised by three things:

1. The game is VERY boring and anti-climatic.
2. The matches are determined by penalties more often than not.
3. A team can get selected because of their reputation to build amazing robots in the past. (Someone from 16 or 1625, please explain to me why you selected us [648]? I'm grateful that you did, but it's perplexing.)

Any comments, concerns? Agree or disagree so far?

I hope that something is done to make this game more exciting, as right now I believe it's the worst yet. Can't wait for IRI and their rule changes.

Also, this was a very bad game to introduce new spectators into, too much going on in any given area.

BTW - Congrats to all of the participants of the Midwest Regional, it was stellar event yet again. And too all of those that dared enough to compete in first week regionals.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I totally agree with you on this. It got kind of anticlimactic due to penalties as well. But later on in elims. the games became more and more intense and there was always a point of climax in the Trenton matches. Either it was the end game in which robots were 1 second off from placing or removing a ball or hurdling at the last second. It got pretty intense.

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I have to disagree here... I think Overdrive is incredibly exciting! I watched the NJ webcast, but I heard that there were a lot of great bots at the Midwest Regional, too. Plus you guys had the national high score yesterday. Boring? I think not.

This is nothing new; I've seen this happen a lot in the past. It has often been quite profitable, too. Even if the team doesn't have "the best" robot on the field, they have experience from past years which can help them to be better at handling their own robot, working with alliance partners, strategizing, and thinking on the fly. Experience is a huge plus in an alliance partner, and if a team has proved themselves in the past, other teams are not going to forget that.

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1625 and 16 chose 648 because 16 had them on a short list and convinced our scout that you were the guys to go with. I will tell you that some people on 1625 had doubts of how good of a third bot you were. You guys were amazing at running laps and I am glad we picked you as a third bot. I actually didn't see your bot on the field a few matches because you were so fast. Well, I am happy with the alliance we ended up with and don't regret anything.

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And together you guys formed what is probably the first alliance in the history of FIRST where every member had a swerve drive.

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As for the first point I can't disagree more. I can't recall a game where the audience rose to their feet more often. Every time a ball went over, the roar of the audience at BAE was obvious from the field. Autonomous was essentially a mass of cheering. This is without a doubt the most exciting game I have seen in my 5 years of FRC. BAE's elimination bracket was very even, we had a tie in BOTH semifinals. Balls went up, balls came down it was without a doubt amazing. We were picked by the 7th seed, and won our first match against the 2nd, and the only time I have ever felt more adrenaline during a match was when we won BAE in 2006. I LOVE OVERDRIVE!

Seriously, this game is amazing. The game presented just the right balance of challenge and difficulty, and teams rose to the challenge, and clearly kicked it into overdrive. This year definitely took the cake for general robot goodness.

Second point, I can't disagree, but I don't really agree. Penalties are huge, but they are avoidable. Teams just need to get better at avoiding them. Come ATL, it'll be smart teams will scout for those who don't get them.

Third point, kinda in a way, yes. In my experience, there's always a deal of politicking that goes on during the draft. I don't know your particular regional, but perhaps you had the most experienced drive team left, and they felt that was important to a good run?

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Boring and anti-climatic, I would absolutely disagree.

The first couple weeks qualifications are always less exciting, even boring, because the game play and robots are new and feeling their way. The finals in St. Louis today were amazing to watch. I don't think I ever have seen a more exciting finals in a first week regional before.

Week 4 and 5 and Atlanta are going to be incredible.

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I'm still on the fence when it comes to the game. I think it has some potentially serious flaws, which are being hotly debated right now (penalties, impeding, etc), but wow, Midwest had some REALLY exciting matches.

I think a lot of regionals will see a lot of boring play, but when you see a regional with the caliber of play that the upper echelon teams had at Midwest, it sure is exciting.

I'll give you the three things I learned from the webcast:

1) Teams need to get exponentially better at avoiding penalties. Many a match was won, and then lost when penalties were counted.

2) Boy, you sure are screwed if you lose hybrid by any more than ~20 points. Anyone complaining about the value of auton being too low last year should be very satisfied this year.

3) Placing trackballs at the end was much more important than anyone imagined, especially with penalties turning what looked like easy victories into close matches.

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No swerve for 16... rear wheel steer I believe, just like our pre-swerve drives.


The eliminations for Midwest were exciting, mainly because the teams separated themselves and used strategy. I'm still sticking to the boringness versus all previous years. I could usually predict who was going to win right after of autonomous.

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I agree with him here, all of us working back in the 648 pits were figuring we were fixing up stuff to be shipped off to West Michigan, then I think a representative from 1625 came over and asked if we needed anything to help with our robot. Then I had a sudden moment of realization that we got picked.

Honestly, I probably from what I saw in the previous matches wouldn't have picked our robot, but I think we ended up doing pretty good as an alliance.

Thanks to 16 and 1625 for picking us, slightly better luck and we could have won.

Sincerely
-Nick Vogel Lead Programmer and IR operator for team 648

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Just a thought here guys.

It is always good to be gracious.
Questioning why you were picked is ok but gracious appreciation that goes with it is excellent.

Jeremiah, I think you needed a big box a popcorn and a diet coke. That would have made it even more fun! Wish I could have been in your shoes - really!

Congratulations all!
Jane

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Check out 00:26 of this video of their robot. They swerve, they just don't do it that often in competition...

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What, no love for Week 6?

As for the three things I've learned in Week 1:

1. This game does not translate well onto a webcast. The live atmosphere fuels Overdrive, and that atmosphere isn't carrying over to the live streams.

2. Shooters are better than arms (don't start flaming here, there is another tread for that)

3. Hybrid is the best and most certain path to victory this year.

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I agree with Scott's point 2 and 3, 1 it is kinda hard for me to know, get back to you in 7 days.

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LOL, I did have front row seats to what I hoped (and in the end was) a great regional. Thanks to all the powerhouse teams for coming and reinstating Midwest and the greatest regional (objective :p ).

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Haha, thanks for pointing that out! I hadn't been able to actually look at their robot and came to my conclusion based on a member's previous comments somewhere on here. :o

(They're usually one of the first teams I look for when I arrive at a comp.)

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Personally, I see the matches from the floor, and this is probably as (or more) exciting as the 2006 game(1). The matches are fast, and once people got it figured out nearer the end of the Midwest regional, there were decreasing amounts of penalties, so it seems that they are having a diminishing role(2). Hopefully most teams will have this figured out, but we'll have to see how week 2 goes.

(3) It's true that teams can get selected for reputation, but one thing I noticed at midwest was a lot of rough alliance pairings for seeding matches. I hate to use ourselves as an example, but just to give a sample for some of our alliances, we had one alliance which had one robot that crossed backwards over a line five times almost giving us a negative score. Another time, there were only two robots on the floor for one of our rounds, and the other one on the floor was a drivetrain with no manipulator. I'm not saying we didn't have any good alliances, but the good alliances were the thin minority (we were honored to play with the psychadellic WildStang robot and its octagon of doom (as our team named your gripper)). Anyhow, we ended up 17th by the end of the whole thing as far as seeding goes.

Thankfully, 1114 chose us for their alliance nonetheless. AWESOME playing with you guys!

I love this game! See you at Purdue next!

-q

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Every FIRST game will suffer when you have inferior team s on the floor struggling to accomplish simple tasks (like say moving or driving in a straight line). The game right now is in it; very straightforward stage and will start to gain elements of complexity when the "veterans" start taking what they learned in the early regionals and star applying things like defensive strategies so shooters and capable arm bots cannot simply run free and dominate.
The penalty situation reminds me of 2005 whenn a quarter of the field was off limits basically. I remember our team winning a match simply because a very veteran team lost thier heads and blatantly whacked us while we were getting loaded and getting ruined by the 30 point penalty. Fortunately 10 points are not quite as devastating. Teams who smartened up and avoided the penalties did well in 2005 (like us) and teams who continued to make th e same boneheaded mistakes struggled. It'll be the same this year. The rules are there folks, learn them adjust to them, live with them.
As for the level of play it's obvious a good autonomous can make or break a team and make "inferior" arm bot actually useful (I think 1024 is actually an arm bot but they made 1114's job infinitely easier by lapping the field and giving them a nice big fat cushion to do their thing). When you have a pair of good alliances duking it out this game is pretty exciting. Mismatches not so much but tha's wit any game.
I wanna see how it plays when I am at a regional full time (not just for the late elims due to travel issues) but it does seem like this game has an awful lot of potential to be a great one that's for sure.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I think I disagree with you with the boring and anticlimactic point. It's not like '06 exciting, but it's not dull either. Some moments were exciting to watch (on the webcast).

However, penalties are too much a part of this game. I feel that many penalties that were given wern't given because they were needed to keep the game fair. Most of the "cross line backward" penalties seemed very nitpicky to me >.>

And... I can't comment on your third point.

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1. I find the game mildly entertaining, but that's my own opinion of it - everyone is entitled to their own.

2. Yes, penalties get annoying for just about everyone, but it is a flaw in the game design that requires penalties in order for you to play that game as intended.

3. This is the answer I want to focus on - why pick teams that seem unqualified to play in the eliminations. (One possible) answer: Alliance play is crucial. I'll use my own team's example - we arrived at St. Louis with a good, quick drivetrain and and arm that seemed like it was going to work. After 9 qualifying matches and a couple hundred quick-fixes made by a dozen students and a handful of mentors, the arm still did not work. Yet, we were still picked into the eliminations, and gave our own unique contribution to the alliance - defensive lapping.

Yes, it seemed unexpected, but looking back in ever-perfect hindsight, it seemed planned well from the start. The alliance was built on role-playing, and the little contributions of one team contributed to the overall greater success of the alliance. Every team can provide something in the eliminations.

-Alex Golec

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I don't think the game is boring, but I think teams will get more used to controlling their bots and more used to the strategies needed to win After this happens the game will get more interesting. This game has the potential to be great, keep in mind it is only the first week.

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If you thinks this game is boring you should watch the eliminations from Midwest. especially semi 2 . I was yelling at my screen and the game play was amazing. i do agree that some of the racing matches were boring but as teems work with there bots you will see less and less of there matches.

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(I was at Midwest, front and center...)

The shooters are exciting and I admit, I was cheering for everyone to make those hurdles. But the excitement of hurdlers is equalized by the boringness of racing machines. In the previous years it was easy to play defense and teams that could only drive around were able to make the matches exciting because they played defense. The defense in this game is boring. Sure you've got the end game where you can knock off the balls resting on the structure, but what can you do about the shooters and hurdlers that don't place the balls and just keep racking up points? Teams like 1114 were practically indefensible because they could hurdle and, if my interpretations are correct, defending teams can't block them from doing so. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I agree, for me this is the main reason why I find this years game so boring. The matches when no one is hurdling are very boring, and the matches when multiple teams are hurdling are boring simply because its the same thing every time they come around the track. People could argue that every other game has a repetitive task, such as shooting balls in 06, or placing ringers in 07, but at least in those games you had to mix up your strategy to make sure you were actually successful against defense. This year you get to do pretty much anything you want and there is nothing the other team can do about it. There is a reason why games like football or soccer have a far greater regular audience than track and field does (besides the olympics). This is my 5th year involved with FIRST, and this is the worst game I've seen yet.

Mike C.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I cannot disagree more. Once teams figured out how to play the game, it bacame very exciting. I'll agree that the early qualification matches and practice matches looked boring but that (I believe) was because teams weren't sure what strategies would work.

I'll agree here, but TBH teams need to learn to control their beasts. Driving the wrong way or interaction outside the bumper zone penalties are both avoidable and those are the ones killing alliances.

This has always been part of FIRST.

If you cannot "sell" your team and robot strategy to others then you will not be picked. Winning is a habit, and as such teams with winning reputations get picked because of this.

We were in that 2nd seeded alliance. You guys were great. Those matches were some of the best, most exciting that I have watched in years. Even from the stands the adrenaline was pumping.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I disagree with whomever stated that the webcast made wasn't very exciting. A few of our team members were watching NJ full-screen during our core group meeting. It was pretty awesome. The whole defense thing, however, does make it look boring. I loved the fact that last year when our bot failed to do anything, including drive straight, we had the option of trying to block other bots from scoring, and I believe it worked once or twice, almost had a few ramp climbs.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Personally, i found the game to be pulse pounding, especially in hybrid mode. Everything was up for grabs. Albeit, this opinion might be founded on the fact that my teams primary focus lapping and occasionally knocking the ball off of the overpass for our alliance partners. But,i could see how watching hurdlers easily rack up points could deflate that feeling.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Boring and anti climactic, maybe. Repetitive? Yes.

I watched pretty much every match at NJ (kinda in my job description)

The qualifiers were hard to get through because it was the same thing over and over again, and the scores never got that high. The elims were a different beast altogether due to the fact that teams were amped up because they knew what was on the line, and the alliances were able to work as a team.

And I agree with the penalties, while there may be a lot this first week, I'm pretty sure that they'll start going down as the weeks progress.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Defense will be a bigger part of this game than most people realize. We saw hints of this at St. Louis. The eliminatio matches where we scored in the 70s was a combination of Hybrid defense and teleoperated ball defense.

I think this game has a little bit for everyone and is more exciting live than over a webcast. The energy at St. Louis was awesome. The average score after Friday's matches was 38.7 (I lost a bet to my broter on this), which was much higher than I expected.

In FIRST, we the teams are responsible for the use of penalties. We find every loophole to try to beat the game. As a result, the most effective method we leave the game design folks to curb behavior is penalties. If FIRST did not attach penalties to undesired behavior, what would happen?

By the way, have you ever watched your favorite sports when two not-so-good teams were playing? borrring.

Also, the more elegantly designed racecars are exceptional to watch. The judges, referees, and crowd favorite was 148. A racecar that is beyond words exceptional. They are extremely hard to stop and are enjoyable to watch. They are elegance in motion.

This is the best week 1 year in a really long time (at least, at St. Louis). Week 5 will be really interesting and the Championship will even be better.

For those of you who have not seen this game live, please wait until you do to pass judgment.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I mostly agree with George on this one. Far too many of the matches were decided by one minute into the teleoperated period or by penalties. By Saturday morning things did improve somewhat with more heads-up play at the overpass (placing and removing balls) brought in some end-game excitement.

It would have been even better if fewer matches were decided by penalties. So many times a team would spend a quarter of the match getting around the field and hurdling, only to waste that effort in the next quadrant with a line incursion while trying to recapture the ball or get around a traffic jam.

One thing I really like about this year's game is the variety of scoring methods in play: IMHO the matches that had racebots (102's Orion proved that just doing laps can be very exciting), arm hurdlers and catapults mixing it up were a blast to watch. The only ones I found tedious were those with just lapping going on. I was surprised that so few made a consistent effort to herd balls while lapping. Many threw away easy scoring opportunities by dodging around their own ball on their home stretch instead of giving it a punt across the line. I hope we see much more heads-up play in the coming weeks.

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I agree. While I wasn't at any events this weekend, I was glued to the Midwest regional webcast trying to get a feel for the game and possibly pick up some solid strategies. Defence was huge! Sometimes it took a few seconds for me to realize I was watching defence, but it was definitely there and it was definitely useful. Defencive play with the balls seems to be particularly effective (which is probably why it there seems to be little defence to the casual observer). In several matches, extraordinary shooters had their effectiveness drastically reduced by defence. I imagine that, as the weeks go on, defence will become even bigger as more teams get a feel for how to do it properly.

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1) 148 is fun to watch. Pretty robot, and very quick.

2) 217's scoring style could be called a Thunderhurdle. I kept expecting their arm to snap off, or their whole 'bot to topple, each time they slammed one across. Despite the violent appearance, their action was very fluid and they repeated it often.

3) Repeated endwall slamming will stretch the field. Ours stretched a little more than four inches by the time we took it down Saturday.

[edit] 3.1) Endwall slamming can cause team controls to jump off of the shelf! Read this, and put some velcro under yours.[/edit]

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Lots and lots of traffic jams caused by the bottle neck points, out of contol bots, tipped over bots or just sly defensive actions. The bots with power, traction & moderate speed came out winners. The little speed bots had little impact during most matches.

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#1. Well, millions of people seem to be attracted to NASCAR. With the exception of the occasional crash, it seems as though it's just hours of driving in circles. Boring? Overdrive is light-years ahead of NASCAR in terms of complex strategy and teamwork. The excitement in this game is how alliances execute their strategy and how the opponent's counter.

#2. The rules are there for a reason. GDC spends a lot of time deciding what should and shouldn't constitute a penalty. Maybe the risk of collision damage to an oncoming robot is why reversing over a line you've already crossed is not allowed. If you don't like penalties, don't break the rules.

#3. Alliance selection: Serpentine selection makes it tough for the top few alliances to pick a third team. You cannot select solely based on a team's standing. At the MWR, Team 16 was in 18th place at the end of the qualifying round, but they were the top pick for 1625 and (so I was told) also 1114. Team 16 has been around for a long time, they have good scouts, they understand what kind of team/robot fits their strategy to win the regional. If you're perplexed at their selection, maybe you didn't understand the strategy they felt would work best.

I thought the MWR was an intense, well-played competition - in spite of being a Week 1 regional. The games, teams and robots will get better and this may be one of the more entertaining games FIRST has developed. I really like Overdrive!!

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Or another team can use excellent scouting to determine the real capabilities of the robot.

ANY team that uses won/lost record (i.e., ranking) exclusively to pick alliance partners is an amateur. Team 1676 was ranked 44th or 63 at NJ regional, but was picked for an alliance. Why? Because we were 9th in scoring, and our scouting system had the proof. We brought that to the attention of the top 8 teams - some were surprised, but most were sophisticated enough to understand what it meant: We were a good robot, but alliances dont always acocunt for that.
What would be nice is to have it mandatory for the actual penalty reason, and the team getting it, to be announced after the match. We'd often see 10 or 20 points worth of penalty and have absolutely no idea why... how can we improve without that feedback?

Don

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Don,

I know that when I announced the score I would announce what the penalties were, although I wouldn't always say the score. If it was line violations I would say that, and then the Head Ref would gladly say which team accrued the penalties.

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You're not wrong, but you are ignoring what seems to be the obvious defensive strategy against effective hurdlers. You can't legally prevent them from scoring a ball they have, but you can try to stop them from getting that ball in their possession in the first place.

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This game is good, and I strongly disagree with the original poster's opinions, but just imagine how much better it would be with a slightly larger field.

As it is right now, killer autonomous/hybrid bots can be very effectively neutralized by having one robot move forward about four or five feet, blocking passage across the second line. With a longer field, there would be space for them to find their way around the blocking robot.

Likewise good offensive bots can be slowed down by very simple machines just getting in their way. With a larger field, the high flying drive trains would have more room to maneuver and would force everyone to build better robots in order to succeed.

I am not saying that defense is wrong, or bad... or not part of the game... we played some very effective autonomous defense in Portland. It's just that offense is much more fun to watch. Thankfully this game gets rid of a lot of the boring pushing matches that have slowed down previous games, but maybe an off-season event could try playing on a field ten feet wider and fifteen feet longer just to see how much more exciting it could be.

Jason

P.S. Yes, penalties play a role. Sometimes that happens in sports. It isn't a bad thing that teams that "play clean" get an advantage.

P.P.S. If you think 1114 is practically indefensible because of this year's game, obviously you didn't watch them much last year... or the year before that... or... wait a minute, maybe it is 1114 that is the factor here... not the game.

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I covered as assistant game announcer to George at NJ, but since it was my first time doing so, please take my comments with a grain of salt:

1. It's hard to do exciting game announcing job when 4 robots sit in hybrid mode, and those same 4 robots have a difficult time lumbering around the track in tele-operated mode. Inversely, it makes it that much more exciting when a robot attempts to hurdle. Now, unless you're on team 102, how many times do you want to hear "...and team 102 completes yet another lap for red" before it gets old?

2. This year especially, it's sometimes difficult to actually get all of the penalties (who/what for) from the head ref without a notebook. Between line violations, impeding, entanglement, and "other", it's hard to remember it all right when the score announcing is about to occur. I did try to do it when I could, but I felt like a deer caught in headlights when there were 4 penalties, the head ref took his notebook back, and there was very little time for delay between the score entering and the displaying on the screen. I chalk it up to inexperience, though.

The irony of me actually volunteering for the job was that right when FIRST Overdrive was announced, I thought "man, what the heck can the play by play guy do? I mean, how many times can you say 'hey look, red completed another lap'?" But then somehow I ended up volunteering to do it :).

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I also was surprised to see how little herding occurred. I do not remember any robots at the NJ regional herding to the extent that i completely left that statistic off the scouting sheets i made. So many robots just did laps.

102 was exciting for being so fast but that wore off after the practice matches. Then it was exciting for the spectacular ways in which it went down.

1676 sort of killed the excitement, but also had everyones attention with its slow moving elevator creating a lot of suspense and quick glances at the clock.

The most exciting robots (not including crashing) there in my opinion were 103, 25, 1647, 1228, 2016, 449 and 1547's whipping action.

I agree about picking the teams. The teams i picked for our alliance (1279 and 2016) were 25th and 27th place respectively and we made it to semifinals and went out with a bang putting up a great fight with our robot not running for the entire match.

I also agree that it would be really awesome if they reported penalties more clearly then I would have a better idea on what other teams are having trouble with.
I think i definitely seriously underestimated how long six seconds were. Six seconds were enough to seriously impede the scoring ability of a hurdling robot. Sadly this definitely would have affected the outcome of my teams semifinal matches.

EDIT

Oh yeah I also want to say that i was surprised by how much like an actual racing game this got to be. It was cool watching the teams make laps and weave and leave bananas on the track for other teams in the form of broken robots.

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Due to 964's lack of early insight of it's design flaw, we will be herding instead of lifting/hurdling. But I never stopped to realize this weekend that there were virtually no herders. Maybe as more regionals come by we'll see more.

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Boring? Watch this

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170 points total, 6 point margin of victory...and this is only week 1! I think we've got a hot game this year!

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Well, regardless of what I think, #1 here is 100% matter of opinion. Some people will find this very fun and exciting, some may find it the most boring game ever...it happens every year.

#2..penalties are penalties. Unfortunately they have to exist, teams MUST get better at avoiding them. It is sad to see matches lost because of a stupid line violation that didn't give a team any advantage in a match, however the penalty must be applied so if teams can have a better idea of field presence, and when you are approaching one of those corners, make sure you don't need to go back even 1 inch before proceeding through. taking the extra 2 seconds to analyze the situation will be well worth not losing 10 points.

#3..This is the perk to being a team that can win, and has proven they can win time and time again. The elite teams are teams that have won the big matches, the clutch matches, and are elite for a reason. Honestly if you are picking, and you have the choice of 2 teams, both of whom appear to be equal in skill level, and one is 71 and one is XXXX, i'd be more likely to pick 71. They have put themselves in a place where winning is status quo for them, and I sure as heck would liek to be a part of that.

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I see where your coming from and I agree and disagree on the first point. I agree because this game isnt AIM HIGH which was my favorite game ever. At the same time it is pretty intense in its own way. I watched as much as i could of midwest and NJ while in class , but i noticed the game to me only came alive at the finals , but when it came alive , it was very intense.

As for the second point , yeah its a bummer when you win or loos not based on points , but who got penalised the least. At championship last year we (540 ) beat a team that had one champs one year , then we lost because of a penalty from out alliance partner , not how we scored.

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#1. I think the game is much more exciting for an audience than I expected at kickoff. I have to agree with Indy Sam here, except I would add the exciting semifinals. I certainly would not have predicted those matches to all be so exciting and close. At least this year we did not experience the field failures and match delays common in previous week 1 play. That's worth a little longer learning curve for teams in my book.

#2. I still feel some penalty calls were inconsistent or plain wrong, but less so than before I went back and read the rules. This is a part of the game and will improve.

#3. In this year's game, as in others, alliance coordination and balance is very important. In our quarterfinal matches it seemed to me that our opponents won partly by working together more smoothly. Judging a team by reputation or past history is iffy at best. However, these things can affect things like robustness, response to competition pressure, and and pit crew ability. These things can only be accurately judged by scouting the pits and careful observation, but are a consideration.

An aside on the pit crew importance: Even with less intense defense, several teams suffered damage and break downs this weekend and all of us were tweaking the robots. In some cases this included some amazing pit work. Many teams made it back onto the field fully functional when lesser crews would have had to skip matches or operate in a crippled mode.

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I also attended MWR

I think that we all need to learn here that you cannot judge a competition of this magnitude and complexity at first glance, or even at first week.

I learned that even when you think you have the game all figured out and you have strategies planned, that experience, determination and teams abilities to evolve so drastically right at the competition can throw a huge wrench into the mix.

Of course week 1 practice and prelim matches weren't suspenseful, teams are self centered trying to prepare for the eliminations. It is not until the teamwork and cooperative strategies are present that the intensity is at it's fullest. Those are after all, the emphasis of first, right?

The evolution of competition in a mere 3 days was astounding, the true talent of teams making the elim. rounds made for some very climactic and exciting play.

Penalties are part of the game and will become less of a factor when we all learn how to play and how the refs are calling them. We can't go changing the rules every time we are faced with a challenge.

one last thing, we are all very aware that seeding teams has as much to do with luck and randomness as skill. That is part of the fairness of first. Reputation and performance are more reflective of a teams value in competition and when 24 teams are drafted, not all of the selected teams will be top competitors but they will all play an important role on the TEAM

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

In my opinion:

Overdrive at its worst is a slow, boring game. It gets bogged down with penalties, robots clustered up and trying to bash their way through traffic jams, and repetitive results.

Overdrive at its best is an absolute tour de force. When you have six great robots on the floor, it's exciting, fast-paced, and unpredictable. A last second hurdle, place, or ball knocked off can swing things in an instant. It's truly a sight to behold, and a very electric atmosphere in person.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Three things I learnt:

1. Hybrid Mode.
-16 points in Hybrid for one robot is two hurdles, and if your aliance can't catch up that fast, you've got some serious potential.

2. Defense, taken in doses.
-There is a new kind of defense this year, a defense that requires slick movement and speed. Defense is not required the entire time, but being able to defense smart can help imensely.

3. Aliance selection competiton
-Other than the complete shaft 1733 got at Midwest regional, did anyone notice how fast the most powerful teams were picked? Granted the most powerful teams always get picked, but this year the competition to pick who you want is even higher. I also think that second picks are competitive. Natinals isn't going to be a selection, it's a draft.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Or go on the same site, and watch the entire MWR elimination round. That's where this game truly shines - when the field's 24 best robots come alive. Even at it's worst, this game is better than Rack n' Roll at it's worst. Here, six boxes-on-wheels can score, and it's a driver skill competition. There, six boxes-on-wheels could do nothing.

Once they're up, I'd also recommend watching some of the Oregon eliminations. While the field was shallower, some of the matches (particularly semi finals 2 and the finals) involved some of the finest play I've seen yet.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I'll throw in the 3 things that surprised me alot:

1. Alot of teams underestimated the task of getting a ball off of the overpass. There were matches where an entire alliance would take more than 30 seconds to actually get a ball down to score with. I expected teams would have trouble controlling balls on the ground, but not even being able to get them on the ground?

2. Bonus points are making quite a difference in some matches. Teams are leaving free points up for the opposition when they could run one less lap and lose 2 points in order to remove 12 points from their opponents.

3. There's no herding going on. I saw 111 herd a ball across rather than hurdling it once, and witnessed one other team herd a ball once or twice, but that's the only herding I ever saw from the webcast. From those few instances of herding I can also say this; the idea that hurdlers can "herd if necessary" didn't appear to be true, as most who tried to failed to get even one herding point.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Yes, AMAZING match, and look what alliances were competing Jeremiah....Personally, I thought that alliance was amazing. The people on all three teams were amazingly helpful, all three robots had crab drive too. There's very few things that can creep another team out more than a whole alliance running full bore down the home stretch zigzagging out of traffic and strafing the whole end. As for the three things I've learned,
1. The game is really exciting if you sit and watch it for a while.

2. Autonomous can be a major match winner. Look at that same match. Had our alliance not had the idea to put Bomb Squad's massive robot on that side, we would have lost the match. Instead, it created one of the largest traffic jams in FIRST history.

3. Shooters are better than arms, but the punters are in a league of their own. In the time it takes a team to set their ball on the overpass, a shooter can shoot a couple balls over the overpass and score more points.

All in all, MWR was AMAZING through the good times and the bad.
Malhon

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I want to give the final word on why we picked 648. As 1625 said the guy who had the list of third picks (me) had one team left on the list. When I was in the stands scouting I saw you guys do some fast moves that got you around a robot and got my attention. After seeing that I watched them in a few other matches and decided they could be a good lap bot. As some on your team told me you did not have hurdling down to a science, but that was all you had tried to do in the matches I was scouting. That was why you were missed by many teams. I was worried that my gut feeling on your team might be wrong, because I did not ever see you try to be a lap bot. Thank goodness you proved me right and were an awesome lap bot. I hope that cleared up the reason why we picked 648, and shows all of you how important scouting is.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I have had the the privilege to watch this competition grow since 1998. First as a student 1998-2000 and later now as a mentor 2006-Present. In my very humble opinion this year ranks way way way up there. 2000 great game, 2002 great game. Does anyone remeber 2001 now you want a bad game take a look at that.

Anyway.........

1. Game is great. It is exciting and it is fun to finally watch some hard competition instead of a bunch of robots trying to kill each other. Remeber 2003?????? I think it was with the boxes or whatever they where and everyone gave up on stacking and just fought in the middle for a "king of the hill".

2. I will agree here I think the rules when written were with the best of intent. I do not know if the GDC thought this through pratically the line violations that seems to be a huge killer.

3. Forget what 3 was but what I have learned is it doesn't matter if you are a shooter or an arm. If you are good and can do it quick and get the trackballs in possesion quickly you are quite effective. Also hybrid/auto can make or break you. That is not to count out runners either. If you are a crazy fast muneverable and have control. You are very very important to this game and often a strong 3rd pick. So if any of you speed demons are going to RIT or Philly please let me know we need to talk.:) ..........

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

Yes this game might not have some of the exciting moments that Aim High did (does anyone else remember 469 and 79 pounding the goal with balls during auto?? or any of the other great shooter that year when they would single handily put 15+ balls inthe goal at once!). But when you compare this year to the last couple it matches up very well.

Take Autonomous this year, IMHO its the best yet. Its not something only the top teams can do (scoring tetras, tracking the goal, scoring keepers), its something every bot can do. For the last couple years auto has been the most boring part of the game for most matches, now thats changed for the better. There is no excuse this year for a bot to not move and score points during auto this year, and there are opportunities for the top teams to excel.

The game play is a lot faster paced then last year (when teams are actually moving..), but the strategy component is not as intense as last year. My only complaint about this game after seeing some great matches in week one is the end game, placing a ball or a last minute hurdle is just not as exciting as ramping at the last second.

Overall my favorite game is still Aim High, but Overdrive has alot of potential and does a very good job of leveling the playing field while keeping the game exciting.

Re: week 1: Three Things I've Learned
 

I watched it... that was probably the most exciting match of the entire weekend. I was right there, in fact my team is in that match... :rolleyes: